Great news - SendAlong can now use your local time zone when displaying information like when a file was sent or downloaded.

One note: if you already have a SendAlong account, your time zone has been automatically set to US Eastern Standard Time (EST). Of course you can update your time zone at anytime by going to the My Account page and then clicking on the Change Time Zone link.

SendAlong experienced a few service outages today, starting around 5 AM Eastern Standard Time. If you used SendAlong between then and now, I recommend double checking that all of your files were sent correctly. Double checking is easy – just have a look at the files you’ve sent here and ensure that any messages you sent today appear in the list – if they’re there, there’s nothing else you need to do. If they’re not there, you’ll need to send the files again.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused!

If you’re logging into SendAlong a lot, you probably wish there was an easy way to skip the log in screen altogether.  Good news - there is.

Here’s how to do it:

1. The next time you log in, make sure to select “Remember me on this computer” on the log in form.
2. Later, just type sendalong.com/send into your browser and you’ll be taken straight to the send-a-file page.

Don’t forget you can also bookmark the send-a-file page in your browser.  The complete URL is:

• https://www.sendalong.com/account/send.html

Along with making it easy to send large files, another one of SendAlong’s goals is to make collaborating on those files easier. To that end, SendAlong now supports posting comments on the messages you send. These comments are permanent and are visible anytime you (as the sender) or any of your recipients view the message online. Comments are also automatically emailed to everyone on the message.

Here’s an example of how this would be helpful: say you’re a graphic designer and you use SendAlong to mail 3 different logo designs out to 10 different people, asking for their opinions on which logo they like best. Instead of hoping that the 10 recipients make sure to “reply-all” on every email they send, they can view the message on SendAlong as well as have their discussion there using the new comment system. Everyone will be automatically emailed anytime a comment is left, and even better, there will be a permanent record of those comments located right alongside the files themselves.

Combine comments with SendAlong’s ability to attach detailed descriptions to each file, and you’ve got the basis for a very handy document and file management system.

Of course, no new feature post would be complete without some screenshots, so here they are.

This is what you and your recipients will see in SendAlong:

And here’s an example of the email that will be sent anytime a comment is added:

Comments are available in all plans, so sign up now (or sign in if you’ve already got an account) and give them a shot!

Some major new features were just added to SendAlong that should make a lot of people very happy.

Advanced Download Tracking & File Descriptions

Have you ever wondered if the person you sent a few files to has downloaded any of them? Or what if you sent multiple files to several people - have you ever wanted to know who downloaded which files? What about being able to tell if the recipient has even viewed the message you sent them? Good news - you can with SendAlong.

Sometimes pictures speak better than words. Here’s an example of what you, as the sender, will see if you’re using one of the Personal or Plus plans:

What you’re seeing:

1. Track which recipients have downloaded which files.
2. Track which recipients have viewed this message (no more “I never saw your email…” excuses!).
3. Annotate each file you upload with a description - this saves you from trying to explain what each file is in the message body itself.

(note: the Free plan doesn’t include Advanced Download Tracking, so if you’d like to try tracking out, make sure to choose a free trial of a Personal or Plus plan when signing up)

Let’s see regular email try to do that!

Improved Download Pages

The download page - the page that recipients see when downloading your files - has been revamped to be easier to navigate and understand:

Now that you know what SendAlong can do for you, why not send a file now? Remember, if you want to use Advanced Download Tracking, make sure to choose a free 15 day trial of the Personal or Plus plans.

The available plans for SendAlong have been updated, thanks to some great user feedback (keep it coming!).

Here’s a summary of what’s changed:

• The Free Plan has been reconfigured - you won’t be able to send quite as much now, but that’s actually ok because…
• The Personal Plan has been introduced - at $5 a month, this is great news if you find yourself outgrowing the Free Plan or needing some power features (like secure uploads/downloads and password protection). Your files will be available for a whole 10 days now, and the plan features a more than adequate 1GB of monthly upload bandwidth. Enjoy!
• The Plus Plan has been reconfigured - the price has been decreased and the feature set (downloads per file, file expiration) has been increased.
• The Pro Plan has been removed (for now) - other than the bandwidth that was offered with Pro, there wasn’t enough reason to justify its existence. There are a lot more features in the works for SendAlong, and when more of them are complete an upgraded Pro Plan will be reintroduced that will be much more useful.

Have a look at the available plans to get an idea of which one might be right for you.

Other new features in this release include:

• Upgrading/downgrading your plan has been drastically simplified (it’s dead simple now), thanks to some user input (thanks Patrick M.).
• Various small bug fixes (I guess bug fixes aren’t really a feature, but…).

Did you know that you can use SendAlong to send files and messages in any language?

Special thanks to Kimmo H. for requesting this feature.

Today marks the release of a new version of SendAlong!

There are quite a few things to mention. Let’s get right to the most important one:

Contact Management

SendAlong will now store and manage your email contacts, just like any other email program.

• Import your existing contacts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL.
• In addition to importing, every time you send a file to someone not already in your contacts, SendAlong will add them to your contact list automatically.
• You can view all of your contacts, add new ones, delete old ones, and…
• Select multiple contacts from the list and send files to all of them at once with a single click.
• Plus, when entering recipients, just type a letter from your contact’s name and see a list of matching contacts to choose from - also known as “autocomplete” (see #2 in the image below).

With contact management, you can sign up for a free account and have all of your email contacts imported in less than a minute from start to finish. Why not give it a shot?

Other New Features

Several other features have been added to make sending files even easier.

• The “You have been sent a file” email now tells recipients how many days those files will be available
• The messages you type to go along with your files can be much longer than before - 2,000 characters long to be exact (thanks, Steve D.)
• File names can now be up to 256 characters long
• Logging in, navigating, and sending files is now slightly faster
• A “Remember me” option for staying logged in has been added
• The process for entering your credit card information has been simplified
• Of course, there were several small bug fixes
• Lots of little enhancements too numerous to mention

Special Thanks

A special thank you goes to RapLeaf (and Dan Scudder in particular) for generously allowing the use of their contact importing software which so nicely lets SendAlong import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL.

Update: Here’s a scan of the article from Daily Thanthi (thanks, Sukumar)

SendAlong was reviewed this week in Daily Thanthi (or Dina Thandi), a leading newspaper in the city of Chennai, India. First, a big thank you to Daily Thanthi for reviewing SendAlong - although I haven’t seen a copy of the review myself, I can only assume it was positive based on the amount of traffic to the site it generated.

Let me also say “Welcome!” to all of the visitors from Chenai and the rest of India (and around the world as well!). If there’s anything I can do to make using SendAlong a better experience for you, please just let me know.

Chennai factoids:

• Formerly known as Madras
• Population of roughly 7.5 million (New York City has roughly 8.5 million, Los Angeles has roughly 4 million)
• Capital of Tamil Nadu

Want three free months of SendAlong Pro?

Update: Thanks to Sukumar for a copy of the article! I hope you enjoy your three free months on the Pro plan! Here’s a scan of the article

I’d love to have a scanned copy of the article from Daily Thanthi - so if you have a copy and can scan it, please send it to me at jon@sendalong.com. The first person to do so will receive a Pro account free for 3 months! Of course, you have to send the file by using SendAlong:).

In 2007, 95% of all e-mail was spam. This means that it is in the best interest of large email hosts such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo to aggressively filter spam - otherwise their users would be flooded (even more than now!) with spam.

One of the more aggressive (and inaccurate) spam fighters is Hotmail.com - part of Microsoft’s MSN network. It’s been brought to my attention that SendAlong recipients with Hotmail addresses (ending in “@hotmail.com”) are having trouble receiving email notifications from SendAlong. Why is this? Hotmail is aggressive - very aggressive - in their email filtering. So aggressive that the email may not even make it to your Junk folder - Hotmail deletes it and you never even see it.

Rest easy though - I’ve already been in contact with Microsoft on this issue, and as a result SendAlong will be joining Microsoft’s “Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program”. This means the @hotmail.com delivery issue should be solved very soon and delivery rates for other email services should increase as well.

I appreciate your patience on this issue, and I’ll post here again when the problem is fixed.

If you’ve experienced delivery problems (to Hotmail or any other email provider), please Contact Us and mention the email address you were trying to send to.